Altrincham FC manager Lee Sinnott will be giving us the inside track on the Robins’ return to the Conference. Here’s his latest column for Altrincham Today.
The 2-1 victory over Torquay on Saturday was a quality result, but no-one is getting carried away. I know the gap between us and the play-offs is getting a mention, but I’ll reiterate once more that we’ll just keep rolling the dice and seeing where it takes us.
I thought our best spell came after the opening few minutes of the second half, when we saw a response to what had been said in the changing room at half-time. The players got a bit of a rollicking, because I just thought we were a bit slow in mind and body in the first half. If we had moved the ball around as we can, we would have asked them a few questions, and that’s certainly what we did in the second half.
Torquay will point to a couple of opportunities they had and say they should have scored, and maybe so, but it was still a top-notch result for us and one we deserved.
Apart from those opening few minutes, and a spell near the end after they scored, we were the team in the ascendancy. They had a couple of opportunities they might have done better with, but we manufactured ourselves a 2-0 lead with two very well-taken goals.
It was a great header from Damian Reeves for the first, and I thought he was excellent for the second. It was a good, clean first touch, and he had only one thing in his mind after his turn opened up a shooting opportunity. Good for Ryan Crowther, too, that he was alert to the possibilities after the keeper parried it, and, of course, he had a hand in the opener as well.
At 2-0 up, a third goal can make it deckchairs and sombreros time, but equally there’s the risk of being pegged back to 2-1 and having to see the game out. That’s what happened, and I wasn’t at all happy with the way we allowed Louis Briscoe to pull one back for them. We let him step into a pocket and pull the trigger, and with the quality he’s got, it’s in the back of the net before you know it.
That seemed to shake us a bit, because there were too many instances after that of allowing people to pick the ball up in the final third and drive at us.
Of course, Sean Williams’ second yellow for a supposed dive was a talking point, but there’s not much I can say. From my vantage point it was right over the other side of the pitch, but Sean says he did not dive, so we will leave it at that. It’s just disappointing that we will lose him for the FA Trophy tie at Bath City on Saturday, but I would expect Peter Cavanagh to be fit after a bit of stiffness in his Achilles.
So far, I think the players have earned their 42 points. You look back at the first few games and think, if we carried on like that, we’d be heading for serious problems. But full credit to them for what has happened since. We have played everyone in the league now, and every game has brought its own challenge. I’m not saying we have cracked it yet, but we have become accustomed to what it’s all about and what is required.
